Assalamwalaikum. I am a Computer Engineer, GOLD MEDALIST :D, from SSUET having expertise on Microsoft C#, Java, PHP, and ObjectiveC. Working as "Software Engineer" at "Active Capital IT (ACIT)" developing iPhone and iPad applications. Take a look at my 'Resume' for more.

FreeMat – the MATLAB alternative

Working on Ubuntu, thinking if I could create my assignment tasks from the university without restarting the system and booting into windows, I searched Synaptic for MATLAB and found in the first few results FreeMat. From the Synaptic’s description,

FreeMat is a free environment for rapid engineering and scientific prototyping and data processing. It is similar to commercial systems such as MATLAB from Mathworks, and IDL from Research Systems, but is Open Source. FreeMat is available under the GPL license.

Tried running a couple of tasks I have previously programmed and voila all of them worked :D. It stood at only under 10mb, is fast and suited perfect for the small algorithm implementations we are working on in the university.

Tried octave… Weighs a bit more than FreeMat at about 20mb 😛 which is still ofcourse way too less than MATLAB… The problem is that it is a command line application i.e. no menus, no M-file editor, everything has to be achieved by issuing commands… Though all lab tasks run on Octave too :D…

Glad you like the concept – and note that we do offer a limited free account, 1 running session and little storage, but you can use that until you’re ready to try out a free trial. Early users get special attention anyhow :-).